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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685761">Feeling Blue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirate_smile/pseuds/pirate_smile'>pirate_smile</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Anxiety, But also, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Half-Infected Paul, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Maybe worse, Post-Canon, boomers ruin everything, both ways, character deep dive, spoilers it's not great, starring Paul's mental state, they both love each other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:27:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685761</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirate_smile/pseuds/pirate_smile</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul had thought the worst phase of his life was over once the Hive Mind had been wiped out. He was wrong.</p><p>A look into Paul's life in witness protection after the apocalypse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Nosy Neighbors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, this story isn't a plot-driven one. This one is a character study. And, in a move that will surprise no one who knows my in real life, it's about Paul. I wasn't sure if anyone other than me would be interested in this angle, so let me know if you want me to continue.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Paul really hoped that Sharon didn’t know how much he disliked her.</p><p>She hadn’t done anything. At least, not yet. It was the anticipation Paul didn’t like. She was tip-toeing far too close to doing what he really didn’t want her to do. It was beginning to feel imminent.</p><p>To be fair to Sharon, though, Paul knew he probably wouldn’t have disliked her so much back in Hatchetfield. But entering a witness protection program after surviving (if it could be called that) a highly-localized apocalypse certainly changes a person.</p><p>He was just so much more high-strung as “Ben” than he had ever been as Paul. He already had anxiety, so it wasn’t as if he had been a relaxed person to start with, but his PTSD now compounded on top of it to make him downright paranoid.</p><p>Not only was Paul not allowed to talk about his part in the Hatchetfield Catastrophe, but he really didn’t want to. Even bringing up the cover story PEIP had devised for him felt like too much.</p><p>Unfortunately, but also by design, Sharon didn’t know any of this. To her, he was just Ben Bridges, the quiet young analyst who had recently moved to Denver from a small town outside of Detroit. Her new coworker who didn’t talk to the other team members much, and never talked about himself.</p><p>Paul figured out quickly that that was going to be a problem for Sharon. She was incessantly nosy, though the word she used was “inquisitive”. She was always making idle conversation with the other employees, asking about their spouses, their kids, their pets, whatever. She loved being in on the details of their personal lives and pushed back if her snooping was met with resistance.</p><p>He had experienced it firsthand a few months ago. Similar to his desk back in Hatchetfield, his desk here at DTR Solutions was mostly barren. This time, though, he had allowed himself a small luxury: a framed photo of himself and “Kelly Kepler”, his beautiful girlfriend, at a local Christmas tree lighting back in December. Emma had insisted on getting a picture together that wasn’t a selfie, since all of the selfies they took together had to be at extreme angles due to their height difference. She’d stopped them next to one of the many beautifully-decorated trees and stepped in front of someone else passing by to ask them if they would take their picture. In the picture, Paul was wearing a charcoal gray peacoat she had picked out for him, some black faux-leather gloves, a pair of black earmuffs, and a red scarf tied high on his neck. She wore a forest green coat that ended at her knees, a fluffy white scarf, and a matching hat with a white puff ball that flopped down the back of her head. Paul had been in an excellent mood that night, and so he had felt bold enough to ambush Emma with a kiss on the cheek just as the picture was being taken. She had squealed with laughter and jokingly reprimanded him for ruining the picture, but when she got her phone back, she had not requested the kind stranger take another. They had captured the moment where Emma’s eyes sparkled with delight perfectly.</p><p>Paul loved that picture. He couldn’t stop himself from getting it developed, framing it, and placing it at his desk. It helped him a lot to get through the tougher days to remember who would be at home at the end of them.</p><p>Sharon had a habit of dropping by people’s cubicles rather than emailing when she had a question, something Paul wouldn’t have minded at all before, but was now a nuisance with his newfound need for personally privacy. She had shown up at his cube a couple of times, and all those times he was able to shoo her away quickly. But that day, she needed a tutorial on a new software the team was using to perform market trend analysis. It was one Paul had used back at his old job, so he found himself in a position of being uniquely qualified to answer any questions his coworkers might have about it. Most coworkers emailed, but not Sharon. So, try as he might, Paul couldn’t get Sharon to leave him alone. She plopped herself down in his extra chair, set her laptop down on his desk and turned to him expectantly.</p><p>Paul inwardly sighed and closed the spreadsheet he was working on.</p><p>He had been nearly finished with his crash course when she asked about the picture.</p><p>“So,” she began innocently. “Who is she?”</p><p>Paul turned to look at her, brow furrowed. Sharon gave him a conspiring smile and flicked a glance at the picture frame on his desk.</p><p>“Um…” Paul blinked. He hadn’t talked to anyone at work about Emma, and he was acutely aware that the walls of his cube did nothing to hide his conversation with Sharon from his neighbors. He really didn’t want his coworkers asking him about his love life all the time, but he couldn’t dodge Sharon when she asked point blank. “That is my girlfriend.”</p><p>“What’s her name?” Sharon cooed, like a middle school girl getting gossip in the hallways.</p><p>For a second, Paul was a deer in the headlights. He couldn’t feel it, but he knew he was about to blush, and it made panic rise in his throat. He broke eye contact and stared at his keyboard.</p><p>“Well, Sharon, if that’s all you need, I really need to be getting back to –”</p><p>“Come on, Ben. What’s her name?”</p><p>“I’m serious, Sharon, this spreadsheet has to –”</p><p>“Ben…” she sing-songed.</p><p>Paul felt his head begin to pound. “Kelly,” he choked out.</p><p>“Aww, Ben and Kelly! How long have you been together?”</p><p>“About a year and a half.” In reality, Paul and Emma had been together for about six months at that point, but the PEIP-approved narrative had them getting together a year earlier so that them living together was less questionable.</p><p>“Aww. How sweet! What’s she like?”</p><p>Paul’s chest tightened and he stood. “Excuse me, Sharon,” he managed as he brushed behind her and out of his cube, all but running toward the bathrooms. He heard Sharon call out to him in concern, but he did not acknowledge her.</p><p>He made his way into the men’s bathroom and barreled into a stall, banging the door shut behind him.</p><p>He put the lid down and sat on the toilet, lowering his head into his hands. Paul sat there and listened to his breathing for maybe ten minutes before it slowed down enough for him to feel comfortable going back to his desk. Once he did, Sharon was gone.</p><p>Paul had immediately shot his boss an email asking if he could work from home the next day, since he thought he might be coming down with something and he didn’t want to pass it along. Scott, thankfully, said yes.</p><p>Now, Paul was terrified of Sharon’s curiosity overpowering her guilt to the point where she would start asking him more personal questions. Hopefully, that display, along with everything else, would be enough to keep her away, at least for a while.</p><p>Everything else, of course, being exactly what he didn’t want to talk about under any circumstances.</p><p>His other coworkers wouldn’t be a problem. They were way too uncomfortable with the subject to ever talk about it around him, but thanks to how little privacy cubicle walls provided, Paul knew exactly how they felt about him.</p><p>They’d noticed at least some of Paul’s strange coloring. It was clear by the way they had looked at him during his first few days at DTR. Some of them still looked at him that way. Others avoided eye contact altogether. Not as a way of avoiding talking to him, but specifically because they didn't want to look him in the eye.</p><p>It had been through eavesdropping that Paul learned that a couple of his team members had noticed his teeth. They were talking in hushed tones in a cube caddy-corner to his own, but not hushed enough.</p><p>“They’re the same color as his eyes,” he heard one of them, Eddie, say.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Jessica asked. “He’s always wearing his glasses.”</p><p>To Paul’s dismay, he could no longer wear his contacts. Keeping them in for even a few minutes irritated his eyes severely now. It also eliminated the option of wearing colored contacts to cover up the vibrant, unnatural blue his eyes now were. Ben Bridges was a man who wore his glasses every day, and Paul just had to hide behind them as best he could.</p><p>“Yes! I sat next to him at last week’s meeting.”</p><p>Unfortunately, Paul’s eyesight wasn’t bad enough to need his glasses all the time. They were mostly for reading, which, while that encompassed most of what he did daily at his job, was not everything. He had to take them off to follow along with presentations at team meetings. He couldn’t wear them while he drove, either. He couldn’t avoid people seeing his neon blue eyes every once in a while, and once they did, he was relying on people being too uncomfortable to bring it up.</p><p>“It seems far-fetched, though, doesn’t it, Eddie? I mean, teeth don’t just…”</p><p>“I know that, but I know what I saw, okay? I don’t know why, but Ben’s teeth are –”</p><p>Right then, Paul locked his computer and stood from his chair. Eddie and Jessica stopped talking, and Paul pretended not to notice them or the guilty looks on their faces as he walked past them to the watercooler.</p><p>Paul had always been pretty good about brushing his teeth. They were naturally white back in Hatchetfield. But the Catastrophe had caused his teeth to become…stained. He supposed he was grateful he hadn’t had yellow teeth before, because that might have meant his teeth would be green, which seemed worse.</p><p>Because of this, Paul tried to keep his teeth inside his mouth whenever possible. It wasn’t that difficult; it wasn’t like he was a talkative type before, and he was less so now. He couldn’t avoid it altogether, but he could limit his polite smiles to closed-mouth ones, and he could keep responses as brief as possible.</p><p>All the rest, Paul was able to hide underneath his clothes and watch, but even that could be suspicious, he found. In the winter, the office was kept warmer than the rest of the year. Jessica complained frequently about the layers she had to shed just to keep from getting a heat stroke. Denver winters were cold, though not as cold as Michigan winters, but the weather inside the office was much closer to a Michigan summer. People removed their cardigans, rolled up their sleeves, and fanned themselves. Ben Bridges, however, kept his suit jacket on at all times and did not join in his coworker’s chorus of complaints. He never even seemed bothered by it.</p><p>And he wasn’t. In fact, Paul preferred the warmer temperature to what it had been in the fall. His body temperature was running colder these days, so the warmth of the office was perfect for just wearing a suit. Back in the fall, Paul had almost wanted to bring a blanket to work. Now that it was March and spring was coming, the office was cooling off again, and Paul was going to be uncomfortable again. He worried about what the summer months would be like and considered buying a space heater.</p><p>Taken together – the eyes, the heat, even the teeth – it was enough to make Ben Bridges the office weirdo. But he was a harmless office weirdo, so all of his coworkers had decided to ignore it.</p><p>All of them except Sharon.</p><p>He could tell how much it was killing her not to ask about his electric blue eyes, his slightly blue-stained teeth, and his comfort with the heat. She always looked like she was physically holding the questions back whenever he saw her. In her mind, it was out of some backwards sense of concern for him or something, but in reality, she just couldn’t mind her own damn business.</p><p>Paul was sensing a storm coming. He had gotten an email from Scott saying that Sharon’s desk was getting full and a high visibility project had just landed on it, and he all but told Paul that he was going to be helping her with it. The project was clearly going to heavily involve the new software, which explained why Paul had been put on the task.</p><p>Great, Paul thought, I’m going to have a new desk buddy.</p><p>And now, two days later, Sharon was knocking on the opening of his cube walls, computer in her other hand. Paul suppressed a sigh.</p><p>“Hi, Ben! How’ve you been?”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>Sharon waited a moment for him to say more, but he didn’t. “Did you get the email from Scott about the McKinley project?”</p><p>“Yep.” Paul nodded.</p><p>“Do you mind showing me how you were thinking of tackling the tests?” She was already sitting down.</p><p>“I’m sure I could figure out a way to do it on my own, but I’m sure you already know a faster way than anything I could come up with!” she laughed loudly.</p><p>“Sure.” Paul closed the report he had been writing and began to work with Sharon on the project.</p><p>Working with Sharon wasn’t that bad, for the most part. She just occasionally wandered away from work to try to talk about other things and Paul had to try to redirect her.</p><p>“So, how’s your girlfriend been doing, Ben? Kelly, right?” Sharon asked.</p><p>Paul stopped typing, and he heard at least one other person nearby stop typing, as well. “She’s fine.”</p><p>“Have you two done anything fun recently? The weather’s been warming up, so I’m sure you’re getting out more.”</p><p>“No, not really.” His fingers were getting twitchy.</p><p>“Have you gone to see any movies?”</p><p>“No.” He could see Sharon’s mouth opening again. “So, once you get results from the preliminary analysis…”</p><p>Maybe fifteen minutes passed before Sharon shifted topics again. She talked for a while about her in-laws coming over to stay with her for Christmas a few months ago. Paul had heard this story before, but she told it like it was fresh news. He let her speak, hoping he could pivot back to the project before she –</p><p>“Do you have any family in Denver, Ben?”</p><p>Before she did that.</p><p>“No,” he responded, refusing to think about the fact that, because of the Hatchetfield Catastrophe, he had no family anywhere now.</p><p>“Oh, so is Kelly’s family here?”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“So what brought you out to Denver, then?”</p><p>“Hang on.” Paul opened his email and read a message he got from Arnold answering a question he had about budget. He dragged out the process by making a note of what it said on his notepad and shooting him a thank-you email. Once he was done, he switched back to the new software and launched the graphing tool. “Now, there is a graphing tool here, but it has some limited features…”</p><p>Sharon sat next to him in his cube for a couple hours in total as he explained the finer points of the software. Paul felt like he was running a marathon, and he could almost see the finish line. There were only a couple more steps in report generation, and once he was done, he should be able to ditch her.</p><p>“Do I want to send these results to Excel, or should I run the data through one more time?”</p><p>He shook his head. “Running another analysis layer on the data won’t change the results at all. It’ll just be a waste of time.”</p><p>“So, how do I send the results to Excel?”</p><p>“There’s a button.”</p><p>“Where is it?” She had hunched forward and was squinting at her screen.</p><p>Paul leaned over and pointed at the small green button in the lower right portion of her screen. “Right there.”</p><p>“Oh, my goodness!” Sharon exclaimed.</p><p>He looked at her, confused. “What?”</p><p>Sharon was looking down at his wrist, the one he’d pointed with. The one his sleeve had ridden up. The one on his dominant hand. The one he’d held the grenade in six months ago. The one that had been in the epicenter of an explosion.</p><p>Paul’s eyes widened with fear. Just barely peeking out from beneath his sleeve and watch, was craggy, blue scar. His other hand shot out and clasped around his exposed wrist, pulling it into his chest.</p><p>Sharon’s eyes followed the motion and drew up to Paul’s face, her features tugged with deep worry.</p><p>“Ben, what is that?”</p><p>“It’s nothing,” he responded immediately.</p><p>“No, it’s not. What is it? Were you hurt?”</p><p>Paul sighed. It was clear there was no way out of this one. PEIP had given him a cover story in case a civilian ever saw the scarring he had gotten from destroying the meteor, but he hated it. It sounded so stupid to say out loud, but it was better than the truth.</p><p>“Sharon,” he began in a low tone. “I have a rare blood disorder called Hematological Cymatilis.”</p><p>Sharon’s face was blank. Paul sighed again and looked anywhere but at her.</p><p>“It means my blood is blue.”</p><p>She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.</p><p>“It’s extremely rare and has no effect on me other than the color change,” he continued</p><p>Hematological Cymatilis was so rare, it didn’t exist. Anyone with a medical degree would smell bullshit in Paul’s lie if they thought about what he was saying for more than a couple seconds, which was why Paul was under strict instruction to go to a PEIP facility if he ever got hurt. The story would serve its purpose on average people, though.</p><p>“Then what was that on your wrist, Ben?” she asked, pointing.</p><p>He shrugged. “I fell off my bike when I was a kid.”</p><p>She watched him for a minute, speechless, and Paul took her silence as an opportunity to finish the demonstration he had been giving her. It only took about one more minute before he politely asked her to leave his cube. He could still feel his heart pounding from earlier, and he felt minutes away from breaking into a sweat, which would be very odd for a number of reasons.</p><p>Once she got to the opening in his cube, Sharon turned back to face him. “Are you sure you’re alright, Ben? If there’s anything I can do…”</p><p>Paul pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He was in agony. “Yes, Sharon, I’m sure. Hematological Cymatilis has no effect on how my blood circulates or distributes nutrients. It just means it’s blue. Look up if you don’t believe me.”</p><p>PEIP had doctored two separate medical research papers about the fake disorder as a precautionary measure. They were just as bullshit as anything Paul could say about “blue blood” – including speculation that some medieval king must have had it, thus coining the phrase “blue blood” to mean “royal”. They were more a way to stave off curious layman. Emma joked that Paul had better not make friends with any doctors, or they’d have to move again.</p><p>He looked at Sharon again, and started to feel a small pang of guilt at how rude he must sound. “But thank you for your concern. I’ll be fine. Have a good day.”</p><p>Sharon left his cube with a nod. Paul sighed again. He had a feeling he was going to be the talk of the office for the next week or so.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Quiet Nights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ask and ye shall receive!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Turns out Paul was wrong. He wasn’t the talk of the office for a week. He was the talk of the office for at least a month and a half.</p>
<p>It was impossibly easy to tell. The hushed voices people stopped speaking in when he walked by, the fearful looks they had on their faces. The lingering stares that became longer and more frequent. Even when people tried to pretend that they hadn’t heard, he could see the knowledge of it written across their faces. Paul hadn’t asked Sharon to keep his blood “disorder” between the two of them, because even if he had, he knew she wouldn’t have been able to. As soon as she knew, the entire office did.</p>
<p>Everything he feared about revealing his blue blood came true. The ways his coworkers looked at him – everyone had a look that was a little different – made him feel…like a monster. A freak of nature. A freak <em>beyond</em> nature.</p>
<p>Inhuman.</p>
<p>A dark part of his brain would respond to that thought. He was inhuman, wasn’t he? By definition, that’s what he was now. PEIP’s scientists had called what had happened to him after the Catastrophe a “permanent physiological restructuring”. His body had been restructured. Irreversibly. His body didn’t work – didn’t communicate – the way it had before, the way a human body did. The changes were drastic, more drastic than discolored blood. Drastic enough that he was, on paper at least, an…</p>
<p>And even though his coworkers had no clue about any of that, even though they had no idea what he had been through, they still looked at him as if they did. As if they knew he didn’t belong here, or anywhere, but were too afraid of him to say so. It made Paul’s skin crawl. It made him nauseous.</p>
<p>It took a lot more effort to separate himself from his anxieties and get work done. He felt like he was always being watched, being feared, being judged. He came home most days feeling completely spent.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long for Emma to notice. He saw a look of worry develop on her face one night about a week after the incident with Sharon. She sat him down on the couch beside her and began rubbing circles onto the top of his hand with her thumb.</p>
<p>“What’s up, Matthews?” she asked softly.</p>
<p>Emma had made herself clear months ago that she was garbage with emotions and “all that heavy shit”. She said she was especially bad with being “delicate”. Paul silently begged to differ.</p>
<p>Still, he hesitated. He didn’t like bogging her down with his issues relating to…the blue. She had her own trauma associated with it, and he didn’t like being the cause of her suffering, if he could help it. He was already the cause of his own pain; one of them was enough.</p>
<p>He tried a smile. “Nothing. I’m fine.” Emma raised an eyebrow at him and took his glasses off of him and placed them on the coffee table. She became clearer in his vision as she looked back at him. “Don’t bullshit me, nerd. It doesn’t work.”</p>
<p>Paul’s chin dropped and he chuckled. “Really, Emma, I’m okay.”</p>
<p>“Really? Usually, when you’re okay, you don’t come home from work moping, staring down at your shoes, and sighing a bunch. You really oughta let me know when you flip the script so I can worry about you when you come home smiling.”</p>
<p>She lifted his chin up. “And I mean a real smile, not whatever the hell this is,” she said, patting his cheek.</p>
<p>Paul sighed as his fake smile dissolved. Emma’s eyes lit up and she pointed at his face.</p>
<p>“See? Called it! I knew you were faking!”</p>
<p>He laughed at that and her face softened.</p>
<p>“Now, come on, Paul. I know something’s up with you. Do you want to talk about it?”</p>
<p>He shook his head guiltily at her.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she assured. “Do you want to just cuddle here all night after I make dinner?”</p>
<p>“Yes, please,” he breathed out.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she repeated more brightly, rubbing his upper arm. Then she got up and started talking about what she might want for dinner. He slowly left the couch and followed her, sitting at one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. He just watched as she made her dinner and listened as she spoke about everything from how good the pita bread she was using was going to taste, to her day at work, to some 80s movie she’d seen as a kid. Once she had finished preparing her food, he picked up the dialogue while she ate. He recounted some silly gossip he’d overheard at the office not too long ago. One of his coworkers had been dog-sitting for a friend which ended in a dog-butt-shaped dent in their wall.</p>
<p>They laughed together, and Paul didn’t notice the weight in his shoulders lifting. Emma put her dishes in the sink and led the two of them back to the living room. He had already removed his jacket somewhere during dinner, but his tie was still on, so she took it off him and unbuttoned his collar before stepping aside to let him lay down on the couch. Once he did, he extended his arms, and she draped herself down on top of him, fitting herself into all of the nooks of his body like she had been designed to fit there. She laid her head in the crook of his shoulder and tangled their legs together. She laced the fingers of her left hand into his right as he gently stroked the scar on her outer thigh. They stayed like that all evening, nodding in and out of sleep, before going off to bed for the night.</p>
<p>He didn’t want somebody to force him to talk about what he felt. He feared if he tried, he would be taking a hammer to his already shattering psyche. What he needed was this: silent but undeniable support. He knew she was aware he was having a rough time, and he suspected she had a good idea why, but she didn’t press him to talk about it. She was waiting for him to be ready to, while also letting him know she would be there when he was. For all Emma thought she couldn’t do emotions, she was pretty damn perfect at helping him with his.</p>
<p>So they spent a lot of evenings like that, just basking in each other. Most of the time, it was because Paul had had a bad day, but sometimes Emma did. Emma’s bad days were less quiet than Paul’s. She would rant about what had sucked about her day through nearly the whole evening. And he would listen, chiming in with sympathetic assurances at all the right moments, but mostly just letting her speak.</p>
<p>Paul remembered one night when Emma had been more talkative than she’d ever been. Her day had been really taxing, from the sound of it. First, she had found big, deadened chunks in a large portion of her crop of cannabis, and she had to spend most of her day pruning to try to salvage as much of each plant as she could. That had caused her to skip her lunch break, which always made her cranky. Then, she had forgotten her earplugs at home, so she had to listen to the overhead radio when she went to the grocery store after work. On top of all that, they had played a Frank Sinatra song, which caused her to go a panic attack. She had been nowhere near a quiet spot when it started playing, so she’d had to curl up into a ball in the pasta aisle. And, as if her day couldn’t get any worse, one song after Sinatra, they had played Pat Benatar, and she’d had another panic attack in the middle of the grocery store. Once she could stand again, Emma had abandoned her shopping cart and called takeout.</p>
<p>By the time Paul got home, she had been mostly cried out, but she still had a lot to say. She had talked almost nonstop for about four hours. They had vacated the couch, changed into their pajamas, and curled up in bed long before she was done.</p>
<p>Having run out of things to say, Emma started tracing patterns on his chest with her fingertips, carefully avoiding the patterns that were already burned into his skin. He could only see the top of her head from where she lay, but he could tell she was thinking. He just waited.</p>
<p>“You’re awake, right, Paul?” she asked quietly.</p>
<p>“Yep.” He popped the “p”.</p>
<p>She snorted. “Right, I forgot. Dumb fucking question.”</p>
<p>He squinted down at her as the tracing continued. “Sorry for talking your ear off,” she said. “I just had to get that off my chest, you know?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I get it.”</p>
<p>“I mean, that was maybe the suckiest day I could ever imagine. Like, my nightmares have nightmares about a day like today.”</p>
<p>Paul laughed weakly, but they both knew that wasn’t true. Since Paul slept a lot less now, he was usually awake whenever a nightmare would grab hold of Emma. He watched as she would bolt upright in bed in a cold sweat, half-ready to flee the bedroom. He heard what words – what names – were on her lips as she was startled awake. He saw the tears in her eyes as she readjusted to reality.</p>
<p>Maybe her day had been awful, but her nightmares were worse.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t your nightmare’s nightmare be a good day?” he offered. “You know, like a double negative?”</p>
<p>It was her turn to laugh. “Yeah, maybe…” she trailed off. “Seriously, though, sorry about complaining all night. It’s probably not how you wanted to spend your evening.”</p>
<p>He furrowed his brow and drew her closer into his side. “Well, no,” he said. “but that’s only because I hate it when you have a bad day. I don’t mind if you need to talk about it.”</p>
<p>Emma was quiet again for a moment. “Thanks, Paul,” she whispered.</p>
<p>“No problem.”</p>
<p>She twisted so she was looking at him in the dim light. “Were you actually listening to all of that, though? It’s fine if you weren’t. I was going on for hours.”</p>
<p>“I was listening,” Paul said defensively.</p>
<p>Her chin rolled on his chest. “You don’t have to pretend, Paul.”</p>
<p>“I was! Ask me anything.”</p>
<p>She thought for a moment. “How many plants did I lose to the rot?”</p>
<p>“You lost three today,” he responded immediately. “You think you’ll probably lose seven more total, but you’re trying to minimize the loss as best you can by going to visit them early tomorrow. But if you want to do that, you should probably go to sleep.”</p>
<p>An amazed smile crept onto her face. Then, her cheek fell back onto his chest. “You’re a great listener, Paul. I’m impressed.” She finally sounded sleepy. He gently ran his hand across her back.</p>
<p>“Well, you’re an interesting person to listen to, so it’s pretty easy.” He leaned up to kiss her head. “Good night, Emma,” he whispered. “Sleep well.”</p>
<p>That had become their routine ever since moving to Denver. Checking in with each other when their respective workdays ended to make sure the other was okay before doing anything else. The Hatchetfield Catastrophe had left them both changed and vulnerable, and they only had each other to lean on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Sriracha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Not every night was bad, though. They had more good nights than bad.</p><p>Paul’s favorite time of day was when he came home from work, because seeing Emma was by far the best part of his day.</p><p>About a week after the thing with Sharon, Paul had come home from work to find Emma already home like he always did. He worked later than she did and farther from home. She was in the kitchen, deep in the throws of cooking something that smelled amazing, though Paul would probably just stick to smelling it.</p><p>“Hey, Matthews! Come in here and taste this!” she called.</p><p>He rounded the corner and leaned against the counter between the kitchen and the dining room. “Why?”</p><p>“Because,” she said as she stirred the contents of her wok. “I tweaked the recipe for the yakisoba sauce, and I want to know if it sucks.”</p><p>“It’s not going to suck.”</p><p>“Come on, Paul, take a bite.” She held out a steaming forkful of noodles.</p><p>He took it from her and ate it. It was good, but he didn’t notice a difference from regular yakisoba until the end.</p><p>“What did you change?”</p><p>“I swapped one of the teaspoons of ketchup for some sriracha.”</p><p>“That explains the kick at the end.” He sucked some air into his mouth. Paul’s heat tolerance may have changed when it came to temperature, but he was still a wimp when it came to spicy foods.</p><p>“How is it?” she asked, with a minor amount of apprehension.</p><p>“It’s delicious, Em. Really, it’s probably what those noodles need.”</p><p>Emma smiled proudly. “Yeah, and if you’re not crying from it, that means I added the right amount.”</p><p>He chuckled with her at his own expense. “For sure.”</p><p>“Are you sure you don’t want some? I only have enough for, like, one and a half servings.”</p><p>“I’m sure, Emma. You can have the other half-serving for lunch tomorrow.”</p><p>“Paul, I’m going out to the fields tomorrow, and you know the microwave there is a piece of shit. It will probably get thrown out tomorrow.” She picked up the wok and gestured it to him enticingly.</p><p>Paul sighed overdramatically. “Fine. But only so we don’t have so much food waste.”</p><p>“Thank you, nerd.” She leaned forward on her toes and kissed his forehead.</p><p>He got up to set the table while Emma divvied up the noodles. His bowl looked like it had a little more than a half-serving, but he decided not to complain. Emma did this sometimes. She was mostly okay with his decision to not eat when he didn’t need to. It would be money wasted on food that someone else could buy and actually eat. But some days, she tried to sneakily get them to have dinner together. She didn’t do it often. She genuinely respected his choice, but he knew she also loved to cook, and she always preferred sharing what she cooked, specifically when she was trying a new recipe. He figured it couldn’t hurt to eat with her every once in a while.</p><p>He was still able to eat. His body wasn’t so drastically reconstructed that he didn’t have a GI tract, but it just didn’t do anything for him anymore. He hadn’t stayed at the PEIP research facility long enough to know why, but he guessed his cells must be getting energy from somewhere else. Eating was aesthetic for him, now, so he didn’t see much reason to bother when they were at home. He would choke down a granola bar at work while he worked through lunch, and he and Emma went out to dinner sometimes, but that was the extent of it, really.</p><p>Still, he liked dinner with Emma, whether there was food in front of him or not. And if tonight, she had made some Japanese stir fry for them, then that was just fine.</p><p>“How was your day today, Em?” he asked as she sat down.</p><p>She shrugged. “Honestly? Kinda frustrating. I still can’t figure out the error in my goddamn growth charts.” She scowled at her noodles.</p><p>“How long have you been at that? Two weeks?”</p><p>“Fucking three, Paul. I swear, if I could strangle a spreadsheet –”</p><p>“You can if you print it out,” he said, pointing his fork at her.</p><p>“You speaking from experience, Matthews?”</p><p>“What? No!” Paul’s face flushed.</p><p>“So you’re saying you’ve never printed something out just to crumple it up and throw it away?”</p><p>“Yes! That is exactly what I am saying!” he sputtered.</p><p>“It’s okay, Paul. You don’t have to lie to me. I’m not judging.”</p><p>“I’m not!” He was mostly sure that Emma was just fucking him, but he wasn’t entirely sure, so he felt the need to cover his bases.</p><p>“Paul, you’re bluer than a smurf’s testicle right now.” He coughed on the noodles in his mouth. “Just admit that you occasionally need to vent your anger and you found safe and healthy to do it at work.”</p><p>He took a couple deep breaths. “Emma, I’m already weird enough at the office, the last thing I need is for Eddie to walk by and see me crushing a spreadsheet in my hands.”</p><p>“Fair point. I might try it, though. It never hurts to be the scary bitch at the office.”</p><p>“What, you haven’t kicked the ass of one of your dickweed coworkers to establish dominance yet?”</p><p>“You gotta work your way up to these things, Paul. There’s a fine line between a show of dominance and an email from HR.”</p><p>They shared a laugh at that. That was the thing about Emma. She liked to rile him up a bit. She said his face when he was embarrassed was really funny. He conceded that point. Paul was the kind of guy who blushed with his whole face, and his large eyes bulged even larger when he was anxious. But Emma was always careful mess with him about things that didn’t matter too much to him. Paul didn’t get angry much, so it was pretty unbelievable that he would print out a piece of paper just to crumple it up. Anyone who thought it wasn’t just didn’t know him. More importantly, though, Emma always made sure to bring him back down again. She didn’t change the subject until she had him relaxed and laughing. She didn’t say it out loud, but Paul knew it was her way of making sure he knew that she was just getting a rise out of him.</p><p>No one made Paul laugh quite like Emma did. As much as Paul had partook in idle chit-chat in the past, he was really good at it, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Conversations with Emma always went someplace new and unexplored, like the verbal equivalent of a hike off the beaten path. It was exciting, in the quiet way just talking to someone could be. Nothing was off-limits for her, and the way she could turn a phrase was incredible. He was never as quick in the volley of comebacks than he was when he was with her, but most days he didn’t even come close to her skill. Even when they didn’t go anywhere or do anything, she was exciting to be around.</p><p>After dinner – which Paul lamented the end of, Emma had outdone herself with those noodles – she suggested a board game night.</p><p>“Kicking your ass at Scrabble will be my stress relief instead of choking out a spreadsheet,” she said.</p><p>She always kicked his ass at Scrabble. Paul read a lot of books, but Emma had a much better eye for the moves that could devastate him. She once played the word “quiz” in the top left corner and earned 96 points.</p><p>He balanced that out by being the house’s reigning Trivial Pursuit champ. She good-naturedly griped that she had been cut off from the world for 10 years, so of course she didn’t fill her head with random facts about the queen of Turkey in 1754 or whatever the fuck.</p><p>Board game nights were great for good-natured ribbing, but they were perfect for forgetting. Forgetting about all the weirdness of his existence and pretending his world was normal. His blue teeth, his blue scars, his slow breath. All of that went out the window. He was just a guy spending an evening with his girlfriend – who was out of his league based on looks alone – getting his sorry ass handed to him in Scrabble. For just a few hours, he wasn’t anything other than a person.</p><p>For just a few hours, he was happy.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. PTO</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Last update was short, so have another.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Paul couldn’t imagine a worse workday than the Sharon Incident. Once again, he was proven wrong.</p><p>The office leering had finally died down after six weeks, and Paul was finally starting to feel normal. Even so, he’d been feeling off all day. His skin felt like it was rippling along his body and a lump had been steadily growing in his throat. He was having a hard time focusing on his work.</p><p>He checked the date. It was Thursday. Damn, he’d been hoping he could have gone longer.</p><p>Paul scheduled some paid-time-off for tomorrow. It would be a while off, but he had to stick it out for just a little longer. A shiver ran up his spine at the thought of his plans.</p><p>Just as he closed the tab to the team calendar, he felt eyes on the back of his neck and turned to see who it was. To Paul’s surprise, it was Jim at his cube.</p><p>Jim was one of the more senior members of Paul's team. He had a full head of white hair neatly combed and parted down the middle and a goatee that curled inward at his chin. He wore small, ovular glasses in silver wire frames. He stood and spoke with the casual air of someone who had all the time in the world. Paul had never met anyone who talked as slowly as Jim did, though Paul hadn't had much experience with it lately.</p><p>Jim had been avoiding Paul for several weeks now. Avoiding conversation, avoiding eye-contact, avoiding sitting anywhere near him. He’d only noticed after the whole “Ben has blue blood” thing started circling around the office, but it had started closer to the whole “Ben has blue teeth” thing. He was very obvious about it. Jim was the kind of guy who spoke to hear himself speak, and he reveled in being the center of attention. The cold shoulder he’d been giving Paul for the past couple of months was entirely out of character. Paul suspected Jim also got other people to email him if he had a question for Paul just to circumvent talking to him. It only bothered Paul a little bit since avoiding conversations at work was sort of his goal.</p><p>And now, out of the blue, there he was. He had a gravely serious look on his face that made Paul immediately nervous.</p><p>Jim took a deep breath. “Heya, Ben.”</p><p>“Hi, Jim,” Paul responded suspiciously. “What can do for you?”</p><p>Jim’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Well, I just wanted to apologize for how I’ve been acting around you lately. I’ve been trying to get my head on straight for a while now, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for me to treat you like chopped liver. That’s not the kind of guy I am. I just want you to know that I don’t think any less of you for any reason, Ben.”</p><p>Paul wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that. He swallowed. “Um, thanks.”</p><p>Jim idled at his cube. Paul waited for him to talk again, but he just stood there swinging his arms awkwardly. Paul began to turn back toward his computer.</p><p>“You know, my daughter, she’s, uh, she’s always telling me I need to be a better listener, you know? She says I oughta listen more to what people have to say so I can ‘gain a broader perspective on the world’ and ‘understand the nuances of modern day issues’ and all that.” In spite of his phrasing, Jim genuinely sounded like he wanted to gain the perspective his daughter – a public defender, if Paul remembered right – had suggested he get.</p><p>Too bad Paul really didn’t want to give it.</p><p>“I’m sure you are aware,” Jim continued. “that Sharon mentioned to the rest of the team that you had a blood disorder.” He was very aware. “What did she call it? Hemo-hemoglobic-“</p><p>“Hematological Cymatilis,” Paul supplied. If he had let Jim go on, they would have both been there for hours.</p><p>“Yeah, that. So, what is it, exactly? I mean, she told us your blood was blue, but that can’t be all there is to it, right?”</p><p>The slug in his throat was creeping up into his mouth.</p><p>“Nope, that’s pretty much it. It’s just blue.” His voice wavered on the last word.</p><p>“Huh. I would have thought that it would have had some effect on your blood flow or something.”</p><p>His vision was beginning to blur around the edges.</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“Is that Hematologic thing what made your eyes so blue?”</p><p>His leg was vibrating.</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“Well, that explains it! We were all wondering how you got your eyes to be so blue. I mean, they are wild! Dennis suggested that maybe you wear colored contacts, but I told him that was stupid, because you can’t wear contacts and glasses at the same time, and you’re always wearing your glasses.”</p><p>His head was thumping in a complex rhythm. His ears were ringing. The vibrating in his leg was getting worse. His body temperature was plummeting. His vision was blacking out everything but his cube and Jim. The slug was right behind his teeth.</p><p>Paul started to panic.</p><p>“You know, we should have guessed that those two things were related. I mean, when you’ve got-“</p><p>He shot up from his desk and pushed past Jim as he dashed to the bathrooms.</p><p>“Ben! Ben!” Jim called after him. Paul only barely registered it.</p><p>He got to the bathrooms in record time, not caring about keeping his footfalls quiet as he flew down the aisles. He burst through the doors, dove into a stall, slammed the door shut, and vomited into the toilet.</p><p>After about thirty seconds, he was done. He stared in defeat at his bile. It was just like the rest of him: bright blue when it shouldn’t have been. He held back the sobs, but he couldn’t stop the tears.</p><p>There it was. The undeniable proof he was still one of <em>them</em>. The blue shit. The blue shit that had been found in the coffee at Beanies. The blue shit Hidgens had peeled off of Sam’s head. The blue shit they puked up to make other people like them.</p><p>PEIP had confirmed, after rigorous testing, that Paul was no longer “infectious”. He still suffered what they called “side effects” of being infected, but he couldn’t infect other people. He also had complete control over his own mind, so it wasn’t like Paul wanted to infect anybody, either.</p><p>Emma had said that as long as those two things were true, she could handle the rest. The eyes, the teeth, the scars, the lack of body heat – all of it was small potatoes as long as he never tried to infect her. She’d said that jokingly, as if she never would have thought he would ever try to infect her. She had been trying to make him feel better, but it still made him uneasy. It was a lot of things to just accept, especially from a man – man? – who had tried to kill her once already. A part of him didn’t believe that she really trusted him with her life because he didn’t think she should.</p><p>A knock came from the bathroom door. “Ben, are you in there?”</p><p>Scott, his manager. He took a deep breath in hopes he could speak around the emotion in his throat.</p><p>“Yeah,” he said, voice still cracking in spite of his efforts. He silently cursed himself.</p><p>“Are you alright?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m fine.” Paul flushed the blue shit down the toilet and went to wash his hands.</p><p>“I saw you were taking time off tomorrow. Is it because you’re feeling sick?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he said guiltily, even though that was the first semi-truthful thing he’d said to Scott.</p><p>“Well, if you’d rather, Ben, you can just take your computer home now and work from home for the rest of today and tomorrow.”</p><p>Paul swallowed. “Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Thanks, Scott.”</p><p>“No problem, Ben. Feel better.”</p><p>Scott’s footsteps faded off as he walked away from the door. Paul waited a few seconds after they were gone before he left the bathroom. He took the long route to his desk, hoping to avoid any of his team members. As he got closer, he dared a glance up to see if Jim was still at his cube.</p><p>Dammit.</p><p>“Hey, Ben, what was all that about? Are you feeling okay?”</p><p>“Just sick,” he said glumly. Paul kept his head ducked down as he wormed around Jim and gathered up his laptop. He knew his eyes were an even wilder blue now than they were usually. It was likely they had been gradually gaining color during his entire conversation with Jim. He had to hope Jim had been too absorbed in himself to notice.</p><p>“Aw, that’s a bummer, buddy. I guess you’re headed home, then?”</p><p>“Mmhmm.” Paul brushed past Jim. He took longer, faster steps through the aisles between cubes and to the elevator, just barely keeping himself from running away. His eyes stayed fixed on the ground until he got in his car.</p><p>Paul sighed and leaned his head against the steering wheel. He was an idiot. A naïve, hopeful idiot. He’d thought he had been ready. He’d thought he could last a little longer, but he was wrong. He never should have skipped.</p><p>A lump rose in his throat again and Paul swallowed it back. He lifted his head, put his glasses in the cupholder, and started his car.</p><p>But he didn’t drive home. Instead, he drove to where he should have gone yesterday.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Been on a Kick</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know if my explanation of a nine-eighty schedule is confusing. I'll fix it if it is!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he had first started working at DTR, Paul had asked Scott if he could work a nine-eighty schedule where every other Wednesday was his day off. Scott had agreed to let him since they did team meetings on Tuesdays.</p>
<p>Emma had asked him what a nine-eighty schedule was. He’d explained that it was a structure for flexing hours where he would work nine hours a day for four days of every week, which would be 72 hours. To get the full 80, he would work one eight hour day during one of the weeks and have the remaining day off. Most people worked nine hours Monday through Thursday and had Friday be their shorter day/their day off. Paul had a very particular reason for choosing Wednesdays instead.</p>
<p>He told Scott that he just liked the idea of breaking the week in half, so he didn’t get fatigued. He told Emma that he’d wanted to do nine-eighty at CCRP but had been too afraid to ask. Both of those things were true, but neither were his real reason.</p>
<p>It partly had to do with Emma’s work requiring her to be at HQ all day on Wednesdays, even though he’d denied it when Emma asked.</p>
<p>Paul swallowed down the lump in his throat, which was thankfully not real bile anymore, several times during the long car ride. But it kept coming back up.</p>
<p>He couldn’t believe he couldn’t last even a day longer than two weeks without having an episode. Well, he could believe it, it was just annoying. Of all the things for his permanently reconstructed body to need, why did it have to be something he hated so much?</p>
<p>His gaze kept flicking to the hole in his dashboard where there had once been a radio. Back before the Catastrophe, Paul hadn’t been much for listening to his car radio. He’d preferred to use his drive time to organize his thoughts: run through his shopping list, plan dinner, calculate how many hours of overtime he would have to work to get his reports done. He had been accustomed to silent driving. But ever since that day, a part of him he suppressed longed for his car radio to still be there. Even though he had been the one to rip it out.</p>
<p>Every time he checked his rearview mirror, he saw that, exactly as he’d feared, his eyes were nearly glowing.</p>
<p>At first, he had just tried driving out into the middle of nowhere, where no one could see him, or more importantly, hear him. But the relief hadn’t lasted long enough. It hadn’t been performative enough for his reconstructed body to be sated. It needed more drama.</p>
<p>He found a place a half hour drive from home that was perfect. Perfect because even though it was open on Wednesday afternoons, no one was ever there before seven. With his white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, he hoped the same was true for Thursdays.</p>
<p>Paul pulled up to a stand-alone, cement building on a sleepy, Colorado highway suspended between two suburban communities. The light-up sign read “The Hideaway” in purple, splashy lettering. The windows at the front of the building were blocked by black curtains. The first time Paul visited, he’d been nervous that something more salacious happened here than what their website described, but he had found that that was not the case.</p>
<p>The Hideaway was not a front for a strip club. It was even worse: a karaoke bar.</p>
<p>Paul walked into The Hideaway and was grateful to be treated to the same sight as always. A dark seating area lit only by small lamps at each round table and swirling pink and blue party lighting that was evenly spaced around the ceiling. In contrast, a small stage sat in the back of the seating area, lit by three white stage lights. A bar lined the right wall. Every shelf had shifting rainbow lights underneath to light the eclectic collection of booze the bar boasted.</p>
<p>And, as usual, no one was there.</p>
<p>Except for the bartender. Every time Paul came, the bar was tended by one of two people: Kristen or Brandon. Today, it was Kristen.</p>
<p>Over the course of months, Paul had begrudgingly become a regular at The Hideaway. Every other Wednesday, the one he had off, he would drive the thirty minutes from home to the karaoke bar so he could scratch the new itch that he always had. He absolutely hated it, but he also loved it, and he hated that even more.</p>
<p>“Hey, John! You’re late,” Kristen joked as he walked further in. Kristen was a young girl, probably about ten years younger than Paul. She had an undercut and ear gauges, and she often wore flannel. She had an angry set to her face that starkly contrasted her kind demeanor. She began making the drink he always ordered when he came. If there was one thing to enjoy about coming to The Hideaway, it was Kristen. She reminded Paul of Emma, in some ways. Mostly in the customer-service types of ways. Kristen liked to foster a genuinely friendly report with her regulars. She also liked to talk, but she didn’t need anyone to talk to her, didn’t pry for information. According to her, she didn’t need to ask people why they were coming to a karaoke bar. That was between them and the microphone.</p>
<p>Still, Paul imagined that he must be the center of all the gossip here as well as at work. Here was a guy who went to a karaoke bar in the middle of the day, alone, drank a local draft, sang two songs, and left. And he did it at the same time every other week. Saying it was weird was putting mildly. It was why he had given them a fake name. He desperately didn’t want this little secret reaching anyone at DTR.</p>
<p>Kristen slid him his beer. He took a huge gulp. It went down his throat unfettered, but the lump was still there. The blinding light from the stage was sliding over to him, as if it would grab him by the ankles and drag him in. At least, that’s what it always felt like.</p>
<p>“So, John, what do you have a taste for tonight?” Kristen asked. Of course, she wasn’t talking about the alcohol.</p>
<p>After almost six months, Paul had sung songs from just about every genre. If Kristen and Brandon were trying to figure out what kind of music he liked, they wouldn’t be able to. He’d been so sporadic about his song choices that they must have thought him some sort of karaoke addict.</p>
<p>Which, in a sense, he was.</p>
<p>Paul untied his tie and stuffed it in his pocket. “Surprise me.”</p>
<p>Whenever Brandon was at the bar, that was always Paul’s answer. Brandon seemed to get joy out of trying to find the blind spot in Paul’s musical knowledge. As of yet, he’s been unsuccessful. Additionally, Paul didn’t like rifling through The Hideaway’s huge catalog. He tended to overthink his choices which only made him more anxious and miserable. However, this was the first time he had let Kristen choose.</p>
<p>“Ooh, bold,” Kristen said as she headed over to the karaoke machine. Paul followed her. Like always, he hesitated before the line where stage light began. Paul swallowed again – though this time it felt like it was his pride sliding down his esophagus – and walked onto the stage.</p>
<p>“I’ve been on a Young the Giant kick lately,” Kristen said as she fiddled with the machine. “Is that cool with you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Paul responded. He took the microphone off the stand. He had no idea who Young the Giant were, but it wouldn’t matter.</p>
<p>“Alright, John. It’s all you.” The screen at his feet showed the words “My Body – Young the Giant” as new age rock music started to play.</p>
<p>As always, he knew the notes even though he didn’t. Paul had never heard this song before in his life, but he sang it as if he’d known it his entire life, just like he could for any song. Singing was purely physical. If he wanted to, Paul could mentally check out for the next five or so minutes and his performance would still be perfect. He didn’t do that, though, because if he did, the dancing his body would do would be downright embarrassing. His permanently reconstructed body didn’t understand the minute differences in singing at a karaoke bar and performing in the national tour of Les Misérables. He had to restrain the emotional, Tony-worthy performing his body wanted so desperately to do in order to keep himself from looking like a depraved weirdo.</p>
<p>He zeroed in on the little screen with the lyrics. Normally, he was indifferent to song lyrics, but after the day he’d had, this song was striking a chord with him. The separation between the singer and his body was too familiar, even though the fighting was going the opposite way.</p>
<p>He was losing control. His foot started tapping the beat and his singing got more intense. Paul forced his foot down, hoping it would stop the tapping, but right as he did, the mood of the song shifted into something more mellow and it appeared as if he had been signaling that. His hips started to sway.</p>
<p>Paul squeezed his eyes shut, trying to home in on his arms and legs and get them to stay still. After a bit of effort he began to regain feeling. Once he felt confident he had control over himself, he decided to reopen his eyes.</p>
<p>Of course, right as he opened his eyes, the next lyric was “<em>His eyes are open</em>.”</p>
<p>His body was getting a sick glee out of the beauty of that. He wanted to rip his hair out. He wanted to tap his feet. He refused to do either.</p>
<p>Once that song was over, he felt like he’d been hit by a bus. He wanted to just stop there, pay Kristen, and leave. But Paul knew that he would just need a fix this time next week if he left now, and he couldn’t come back in a week. He resigned himself to one more.</p>
<p>Kristen was whooping and clapping for him. “You’re killing it, man.” She loaded up the next song. “Now, you gotta know this one.”</p>
<p>He did not, but he hoped beyond hope that “Cough Syrup – Young the Giant” would give him an easier time than the last one.</p>
<p>It did not.</p>
<p>Normally, he was indifferent to song lyrics. But this song…</p>
<p>“<em>Life’s too short to even care at all”</em></p>
<p>…right out of the gate, it was depressing. He was already out of sorts after the first song, so he was not ready for the dark tone of this song to show up so quickly. If he didn’t get a handle on himself soon – well, he didn’t know for sure what would happen. But he had a pretty good guess.</p>
<p>“<em>I’m losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control.</em>”</p>
<p>Paul felt as though his limbs were shrinking in his skin. His vision yanked backwards and the screen at his feet was pulled further and further away.</p>
<p>
  <em>“These fishes in the sea, they’re staring at me.”</em>
</p>
<p>He looked up at the seating area. Blue lights blinked open at the tables, watching him. He liked the attention.</p>
<p>
  <em>“A wet world aches for a beat of a drum.”</em>
</p>
<p>The building thumps of the drum in the song resonated around him until it sounded like it was coming from inside his head.</p>
<p>
  <em>“If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away.”</em>
</p>
<p>Paul saw his hand gesture outward dramatically. His field of vision narrowed as his eyes squinted, his face twisting with emotion.</p>
<p>
  <em>“To some fortune that I should have found by now.”</em>
  
</p>
<p>But Paul was lost in his head. He was merely a witness to his own actions. All he could do was think.</p>
<p>He was thirty-two years old, and he was afraid of fucking everything. He was afraid of being talked to, being seen, being. He was miserable all the time. On his best days, the best way he could describe himself was fine. But on his worst days –</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down.”</em>
</p>
<p>An intangible hand grabbed ahold of his heart and squeezed. The distant blue eyes sitting at the tables, filling the whole house, watched him more intently. Paul was leaning backward and gripping the microphone tightly as he sang with feelings that weren’t really his.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Life too short to even care at all.”</em>
  
</p>
<p>The hand released. Pangs of ache and exhaustion thrummed around him from his body, but he knew it wasn’t done. He continued, but he had embraced listlessness for these next few lines.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m coming up now, coming up now, out of the blue.”</em>
</p>
<p>All the lights in the room turned blue. The Hideaway was awash in the color of his nightmares. A monotone hellscape.</p>
<p>
  <em>“These zombies in the park, they’re looking for my heart.”</em>
</p>
<p>Paul remembered the meteor. He remembered being surrounded by them. He could feel them clawing at him, piling on top of him. He remembered running to the helicopter. He could feel General McNamara’s hand around his throat.</p>
<p>
  <em>“A dark world aches for a splash of the sun.”</em>
</p>
<p>The light on the stage surged brighter. Brighter, brighter, until the rest of the bar was gone.</p>
<p>
  <em>“If I could a way to see this straight, I’d run away.”</em>
</p>
<p>His performance was getting more intense, more dramatic. And he was loving it. And despising it.</p>
<p>
  <em>"To some fortune that I should have found by now.”</em>
  
</p>
<p>But Paul was lost in his head.</p>
<p>On his worst days, he could barely keep himself together. A complete mess. He had dark thoughts all the time, but on his worst days, the things he wondered about could haunt him for weeks. On his worst days, he thought about Emma.</p>
<p>
  <em>“And so I run now to the things they say can restore me.”</em>
</p>
<p>Why did Emma stay? He’d tried to kill her less than a year ago, and now she was living with him? Dating him? Why? He was barely better off than he had been in the hospital in Clivesdale. Why did she trust him? She shouldn’t.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Restore life the way it should be.”</em>
</p>
<p>The way life should be? He didn’t know what life should be, but he had a fucking clear idea of what it shouldn’t be. This existence he was leading – it was wrong. He shouldn’t have blue teeth or blue blood or blue scars. He shouldn’t be singing in a karaoke bar to keep himself from vomiting blue bile. He shouldn’t be alive, and really, he wasn’t.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down.”</em>
</p>
<p>He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he only half-breathed. Could he really call himself alive if he didn’t do all of that?</p>
<p>
  <em>“Life’s too short to even care at all.”</em>
</p>
<p>Could he even call himself a person?</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control.”</em>
</p>
<p>The music had long since moved from around him to within him, but now other voices that sounded like his own were singing along with him.</p>
<p>There was a long instrumental. Paul pulled himself forward, trying to get out. His vision tugged closer. A little bit closer to being out of the tunnel. The reverberations of the music got calmer. He was pulling himself together.</p>
<p>Then, his body braced.</p>
<p>
  <em>“If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away.”</em>
  
</p>
<p>Paul was underwater. He stood at the bottom of a pool in a circle of light. Blue eyes watched him. They were packed in every inch of his surroundings, all the way up, their lights pulsing with delight as he sang.</p>
<p>
  <em>“To some fortune that I should have found by now.”</em>
</p>
<p>He was singing his heart out. Everything was left out in the open, and for maybe the first time, all of the raw emotion he was spilling out was actually real.</p>
<p>
  <em>“And so I run now to the things they say could restore me.”</em>
</p>
<p>He saw blue light bounce off his cheeks and his nose in his peripheral vision. It was brightest around his eyelashes.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Restore life the way it should be.”</em>
</p>
<p>A tear fell down his face.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down.”</em>
</p>
<p>A thick liquid draped down the edges of the circle he stood in. It washed away the eyes as it fell. Once it reached him, he felt numb.</p>
<p>
  <em>“One more spoon of cough syrup now.”</em>
</p>
<p>The water faded. The tunnel faded. The Hideaway crept back into view, empty as it had been when he walked in.</p>
<p>
  <em>“One more spoon of cough syrup now.”</em>
</p>
<p>He returned to his skin and the song ended.</p>
<p>For a couple seconds, the room was blessedly silent. Then, clapping.</p>
<p>“Damn,” said Kristen. “That was incredible, dude. Really, I think that might have been your best one yet.”</p>
<p>Paul, who hadn’t looked up from the lyric screen since the song began, kept his eyes on his toes as he fished his wallet out of his back pocket. He didn’t meet Kristen’s eyes as he paid for his drink and bolted out of The Hideaway as quickly as he could without running.</p>
<p>His day had been bad before, but it was now officially one of his worse days.</p>
<p>As he started his car, he coughed into his elbow. His throat felt hoarse.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It's been sooooo great to hear everyone's encouragement and compliments on this story! I wasn't sure if there was a market for my dark and angsty musings, so to see so much love given to this story has warmed my little heart. I'm happy to make someone's day better with these stories I write and I hope I can continue to do so!</p>
<p>Thank from the bottom of my heart! Thank you.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Bad Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was only once Paul was on the road that he realized that tear he’d cried during the song had been real.</p><p>On the handful of occasions where he’d been having a bad day on his karaoke day, Paul would dissociate from his body while he sang. It was like what Charlotte had said. “Your own body is your front row seat.” He’d experienced it a couple of times, and he always came out of it as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.</p><p>The hallucinations weren’t unexpected, either, to a degree. A couple of times he’d envisioned some minor things. Once, he was singing “Brown-Eyed Girl” and Emma had materialized in the seat in front of him, her eyes sparkling in that ethereal way they did.</p><p>He’d never hallucinated himself out of The Hideaway, though, and he’d never dissociated and hallucinated at the same time before. He’d never cried during a song before. And he’d sung some sad ones. Brandon had teared up at his rendition of “Everybody Hurts” and made him swear not to tell Kristen about it.</p><p>This was the first time Paul had sung a sad song at The Hideaway on a bad day. This was the first time his real emotions were affected by the emotional intensity of the singing. Hence, the tear.</p><p>The drive back home had been numb. He felt like a tube of toothpaste that had just had the last glob eked out of him. His mind felt vastly hollow.</p><p>Once he got home, he booted up his work computer and logged the day as PTO. There was no chance he was getting anything done after all of that.</p><p>Leaving the computer at his desk, he trudged over to the bed and fell face first onto it.</p><p>Paul found out pretty quickly in PEIP HQ that he didn’t need to sleep anymore after many nights of trying and failing. He would lay on his back on the hospital bed staring into the darkness of the ceiling, keeping his mind blank in hopes of slipping into unconsciousness. After three nights spent lying awake and not feeling any more tired for it, he concluded that sleep was a thing of the past for him. Part of before.</p><p>Every night since, he would pretend to sleep even though he couldn’t. He’d close his eyes and clear his mind and just lie still. Most nights, he focused on the sound of Emma’s breathing to draw him into the empty, thoughtless part of his mind. When that didn’t work, he would rub her upper arm and count the movements as a distraction. Emma was a notoriously deep sleeper, so just about anything he could do at night wouldn’t bother her, but he still tried to keep himself as silent and still as possible for her sake.</p><p>Even without the need to sleep, the pure tactile comfort the bed provided helped him on days like these. Paul resolved to spend the rest of his afternoon in bed. After a couple of minutes, he pulled himself up to change into his winter pajamas and tucked himself under the covers. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes and fell into the quiet of his mind.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>Many seconds passed where Paul was still as the grave.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>There was a balance to it that Paul appreciated. Half his day spent in the world around him, seeing, hearing, thinking, doing. Events happening. And the other half he was in his mind where there was nothing to see or hear or think or do. Nothing happening. Just being.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>With nothing else to focus on, he could remind himself that he had control. There was no other presence in his mind that could take that away from him. Every choice he had made the day before was his own choice.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>He was still choosing. Every second he laid still was a second he wasn’t trying to kill anyone or puke blue shit into their mouths. He could choose that because there was nothing in his head to stop him. He had his free will, and nothing could take that away.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>He was still Paul Matthews even when he didn’t sleep. And when he didn’t eat. He was still Paul Matthews.</p><p>In, out.</p><p>Or was he? He had a new name now, was he a new person? Or had the events of the Catastrophe fucked him up so much that he wasn’t the same person anymore?</p><p>In, out.</p><p>These were Paul’s most common thoughts. Normally, from here, he would think: “No, I’m still Paul Matthews. Anyone would be left fucked up after what I went through, so that doesn’t mean I’m not myself anymore.”</p><p>But something different happened.</p><p>The darkness receded. Paul was standing in that circle of light at the bottom of the pool again. The lines of waves on the surface rippled across the cylindrical, intangible walls around him, but there was no water. The sounds of a familiar, melancholic guitar line bounced around him. The blue eyes were gone. Instead, there were two full-length mirrors on either side of him. From his left, he heard a voice.</p><p>
  <em>“These zombies in the park, they’re looking for my heart.”</em>
</p><p>He turned and saw himself. He was singing that damn song from The Hideaway.</p><p>
  <em>“A dark world aches for a splash of the sun.”</em>
</p><p>Paul knew he wasn’t singing. Just the mirror reflection was. He stood still while his reflection grooved to the music.</p><p>
  <em>“If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away.”</em>
</p><p>This was the first time he saw what it looked like to see himself performing. The version of himself in the mirror looked like was born to sing. Like he lived for it. He didn’t want to watch that.</p><p>
  <em>“To some fortune that I found should have found by now.”</em>
</p><p>Paul looked at the other mirror. In that one, it seemed to be his normal reflection. It turned when he did. It just stood and looked back at him, unassuming.</p><p>
  <em>“And so I run now to the things they say could restore me.”</em>
</p><p>Then, Paul noticed something different about his reflection. It was easy to miss at first glance. His eyes were his normal shade of blue. The one he’d been born with. He bared his teeth, and they were perfectly white, all the staining from the blue shit he’d vomited up gone. He pushed up his sleeves, and his arms were unscarred.</p><p>
  <em>“Restore life the way it should be.”</em>
</p><p>He looked down at his own arms. They were unscarred, too.</p><p>He was normal.</p><p>He was human.</p><p>
  <em>“I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down.”</em>
</p><p>He turned to look at the first mirror. It was gone, but the singing Paul was still there, uninterrupted in his performance. He looked back at the second mirror and it was gone, too, along with his reflection.</p><p>
  <em>“Life’s too short to even care at all.”</em>
</p><p>Paul looked up above him. A circle of white light hung there, matching the one at his feet. He felt the urge to swim up.</p><p>
  <em>“I’m losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control.”</em>
</p><p>He readied himself to push off of the floor toward the light when a pair of hand clamped down on his shoulders. He looked, and it was the reflection, singing and smiling as if nothing was wrong.</p><p>In what felt like slow motion, he jostled his reflection off of him and pushed off from the floor of the pool. He swam through nothing as he floated up, up, up, the surface slowly getting closer. The music still surrounded him, but it grew distorted, as if a wall had been put between him and the source.</p><p>After a while, he looked down and saw his reflection wasn’t in pursuit. Instead, he was just down there, watching him from the center of the circle.</p><p>He kept swimming. The surface got closer and closer, until he was only a few feet from it. Just a few more strokes…</p><p>
  <em>“If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away.”</em>
</p><p>Paul breached. He saw in front of him a familiar shore. He was in Lake Erie. The island in front of him…</p><p>Hatchetfield. Intact.</p><p>
  <em>“To some fortune that I should have found by now.”</em>
</p><p>Paul flailed in the water until he was running to the shore. Distantly, he noticed the song had gotten clear again. Once he put his foot down on the beach, he saw he was wearing his dress shoes and slacks. Then, he saw his black tie and jacket. He exhaled.</p><p>He ran off the beach into town. He tore through the tall grasses that formed a moat-like perimeter around the city. He weaved through houses and yards just offshore. He sprinted down the highway until he was in the business district. He didn’t get tired. He didn’t break a sweat, he just ran.</p><p>
  <em>“And so I run now to the things they say could restore me.”</em>
</p><p>It was just like he remembered it. Every building – the sub shop, the bookstore, George’s Sundae Shoppe, the trendy clothing store, Starbucks – they were all where they should have been. The sidewalks were the same. The streetlamps were in the same spots. Even the sky was its usual overcast gray. The only difference was that there were no people around.</p><p>His legs carried him down the sidewalks and took some familiar turns. If it were possible, Paul probably would have worn a rut into this route back before. He had walked it every day at the same time for months.</p><p>
  <em>“Restore life the way it should be.”</em>
</p><p>He slowed to a stop in front of Beanies. He took a deep breath and pushed open the door. He didn’t hear the familiar jingle of the bells above the door, and there were no customers anywhere, but he wasn’t paying attention to that. His focus had zeroed in on the barista behind the counter.</p><p>Emma.</p><p>
  <em>“I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down.”</em>
</p><p>He walked up to the counter. Emma looked up from what she was doing and smiled. It wasn’t her customer service smile, though. It was her real smile. The one that stopped his heart every time he saw it, and now was no exception. He felt the half-smile that had grown on his face just at the sight of her expand to take up his whole face.</p><p>Then, Emma walked through the counter and met him in the middle of the room. She cocked her head to the side. “Paul? What are you doing home so early?”</p><p>Paul felt like he’d been jerked to one side. Home? He was at Beanies.</p><p>No. He wasn’t. He was at home. He’d come home from work early because he’d…</p><p>
  <em>“One more spoon of cough syrup now.”</em>
</p><p>Because Paul didn’t sleep anymore, he didn’t dream either, so that wasn’t what this was. He wasn’t dreaming. He was awake.</p><p>And he wasn’t at Beanies. Beanies had been destroyed by PEIP along with the rest of Hatchetfield.</p><p>He was hallucinating again.</p><p>Paul swallowed the panic that rose in his throat. He’d never done this before. He’d never hallucinated outside of The Hideaway. He’d never hallucinated outside of a song before.</p><p>
  <em>“One more spoon of cough syrup now.”</em>
</p><p>But he was in a song. That fucking song was still happening in his head. But that was a new problem. He’d never heard a song in his head before. Had it caused this?</p><p>“Paul, are you okay?” Emma said, worry lacing her words. He’d been hyperventilating.</p><p>Emma had approached him and taken his hands. He looked down at them. They felt real. More real than anything else had since he’d started seeing things. This was really her, and she was really worrying about him.</p><p>He must have left the bed at some point because they were both standing.</p><p>His surroundings hadn’t changed from the inside of Beanies, and Emma was still wearing her Beanies uniform. He didn’t know where he was, but he must still be in the house.</p><p>“Paul?”</p><p>He looked back up at Emma. The final notes of the song’s ending button were fading out, and the hallucination was washing away, like a chalk drawing on a rainy day. She was looking up at him, her eyes round with concern.</p><p>He needed to think of an excuse fast. He hadn’t told Emma about his visits to The Hideaway, or the things he occasionally saw there, and he wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her yet.</p><p>He was coming up empty. After everything that had happened today, he was finding it impossible to even pretend he was fine.</p><p>Emma led them backward and sat him down in their couch. By the time he sat, the hallucination was gone, and their living room had been restored.</p><p>“Paul, please, talk to me.”</p><p>He looked at her, and this time, focused on seeing her. She looked scared. He seized up briefly before noticing that she didn’t looked scared of him. Instead, she looked scared <em>for</em> him. She tightened her hold on his hands.</p><p>“Emma,” he choked out, barely a whisper.</p><p>She sighed heavily in relief, ducking her head down until it rested on his thigh. After a few seconds, she came back up.</p><p>“God, Paul,” she said. “What’s wrong? Did something happen at work?”</p><p>Yes, but he didn’t want to tell her about that, because he hadn’t even told her about six weeks ago, and he could not – <em>could not</em> – have that conversion yet.</p><p>But what else could he say? There was no other reasonable explanation, and Emma looked more worried than he’d ever seen her.</p><p>“Yeah, um. Scott sent out an email saying that there was a virus going around the office,” he said, the words tripping out of his mouth before he could even think of them. “He told us all to pack up our computers and work from home for the rest of the week so we don’t all get sick.” He huffed. “I decided not to tell him that there was no chance that I could even get a flu and just came home.”</p><p>She looked like she didn’t believe him. She never did. He was terrible liar, and he always had been. The only way he’d ever been able to get away with lying to anyone was by omission.</p><p>But she didn’t look like she didn’t believe that story. She looked like she believed there was more to be said that he wasn’t telling her. Normally, she would just let it go unsaid, under the assumption he would tell her eventually.</p><p>But today wasn’t normal.</p><p>“Okay, but what’s wrong with you? You look like some serious shit went down, Paul, and it can’t have been work calling off. And why are you in your winter pajamas?”</p><p>He looked down at his lap. God, he loved her so much. More than he had any right to after only seven months. It hurt him to keep things from her, but the thought of telling her hurt more. He didn’t want her to feel unsafe living with him. If he told her about the karaoke bar and the hallucinations, she would be afraid of him. Even if he could keep a lid on the singing, she would still feel unsafe, like her life was in danger, and she would leave.</p><p>But maybe she should leave. If today proved anything, it proved that he couldn’t keep a lid on the singing. If he missed even one trip to The Hideaway, he’d be wrecked. What would happen if she came home in the middle of a hallucination instead of the end? What if he was trapped in a different song? One that created a more dangerous hallucination? He could hurt her and not even realize it. Maybe it was selfish to let her stay. If he was endangering her, then it definitely was.</p><p>She took his chin in her hand and forced him to look up.</p><p>“Paul, I need you to talk to me, okay? I’m not going to let you hold this one in. You have to tell someone, okay?”</p><p>But he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone. Not even PEIP.</p><p>Two in the head, one in the heart.</p><p>He shook his head. “No.” he said. “No, I-I can’t.”</p><p>“Paul –”</p><p>“Emma, please.” He tore his hands out from under hers and lifted them up in defense. “I can’t, Emma, please.”</p><p>Her face fell. She looked heartbroken, and at the sight, Paul felt flattened. He’d done that. He’d done that to her.</p><p>He always hated Wednesday nights. The nights after karaoke always left him numb and unfeeling until halfway through the next day. It was like he had poured so much emotion into the performance that he didn’t have enough in him for the rest of the day.</p><p>Today was like that, but much, much worse. He knew he should be doing something. Sobbing, probably. He should be feeling sad, or angry, or something. But instead, he just felt awful.</p><p>She reached out to wrap her arms around him. He shot up from the couch, his hands at his chest and his elbows pulled in tight. Shock streaked across her face. He looked back down at her, wide-eyed.</p><p>“I can’t,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. Emma, I’m so, so sorry.”</p><p>Paul dashed out of the living room and up the stairs.</p><p>“Paul!” Emma called after him.</p><p>He got to their guest room – not that they planned on ever having guests, it was just furnished when they moved in and they hadn’t gotten around to changing it – and locked the door behind him. He sat cross-legged on the bed, his back to the door as he dropped his head into the pillows. Emma banged on the door and shouted his name, but he ignored her. He ignored her for the rest of the night.</p>
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